The Irish investigation and white-collar crime landscape saw significant developments in 2024, reflecting heightened regulatory scrutiny and a surge in complex mandates. Increased enforcement activities have underscored the growing sophistication and impact of regulatory inquiries, often culminating in high-stakes appeals or record-breaking fines. Fraud and cybercrime have emerged as critical concerns, demanding rapid, multi-disciplinary responses to uncover perpetrators, recover assets, and strengthen controls. Additionally, organisations across various sectors have faced intensified pressure to conduct thorough independent investigations to address potential governance failures, often navigating intricate interactions with regulators. These trends signal an evolving and increasingly challenging environment for businesses in Ireland. In this article, we explore the evolution of these trends during the course of the year.
Increased enforcement
In the past twelve months we have acted for a number of multinationals in several high profile DPC inquiries. Such inquiries have become increasingly complex and many conclude in a statutory appeal or judicial review proceedings before the High Court or a reference to the General Court of the European Union. They can culminate in fines of several hundred million euro.
We have also seen increased activity in the area of financial services regulation. We represented the Central Bank of Ireland in a High Court application to confirm adverse findings and sanctions imposed following a regulatory investigation for insider dealing against a former NED of C&C Group Plc., the first of its nature in Ireland. The first criminal conviction for insider trading in Ireland was recently secured in another case. There will undoubtedly be more of these investigations.
Fraud/cybercrime
We received a number of significant and challenging mandates involving the commission of fraud and cybercrime on clients. Some of these were extremely sophisticated operations. They required an immediate investigation in terms of forensic accounting and IT analytics in order to determine how exactly the fraud had been perpetrated, to seek to recover stolen funds and to review the robustness of financial controls.
One of these cases involved the issue of worldwide freezing orders against identified individual suspects and obtaining non-party discovery against Irish financial institutions through which stolen funds had been disseminated.
Investigations
Apart from increased regulatory activity which often culminates in internal investigations, many organisations are obliged to undertake an immediate independent investigation to ascertain whether corporate governance has failed. We were involved in two high-profile investigations in the charities/not-for-profit sector. These reports can often be shared with the regulator and are sometimes used by clients to self-report and to mitigate potential regulatory breaches.
Comment
With the advent of AI, the incidence of sophisticated cybercrime has unfortunately soared. Businesses must be particularly vigilant in their financial controls and once confronted with such an attack or actual fraud be in a position to respond immediately. This will often involve commissioning an independent report to determine the extent of the damage, addressing the weaknesses identified and dealing with any regulatory issues arising.
Increased regulatory supervision across the sectors brings its own challenges in terms of engaging with and re-assuring the regulator and protecting a corporate reputation.
Coping with these existential threats requires robust anti-crime policies, continual engagement with and training of staff and having in place suitable crisis management contingencies. In-house legal resources should be fully aligned with external counsel in terms of necessary responses.
Looking ahead to 2025
2025 will see a number of corruption and bribery prosecutions being brought to trial. While these primarily involve members of An Garda Siochána they will be watched with keen interest by all organisations, both public and private sector, who are subject to the provisions of the Criminal Justice (Corruption Offences) Act, 2018 and their advisors. It is inevitable that with increased judicial sensitivity to the importance of high values of probity and accountability in public and corporate life, substantial sentences will be imposed in cases where serious wrong-doing has been identified.
This in turn will no doubt bring increased awareness to clients of their responsibilities. They need to be proactive both in terms of having in place robust anti-corruption policies and ensuring continued awareness within the organisation and with their stakeholders. Many of these criminal offences are ones of strict liability, meaning that no actual criminal intent has to be proved, rather that there was an actual failure to comply with a statutory obligation. It is a defence in certain instances for an organisation to establish that it took all reasonable steps to prevent the occurrence of the act involved.
Investigations are more than ever an important tool in managing such risks. They allow a client to understand quickly what went wrong, why this happened and what potential regulatory and enforcement risks they face. The consequences are very serious involving not only substantial fines but the real possibility of custodial sentences for senior executives, not to mention the fall-out in terms of damage done to corporate reputation.
For more information and expert advice, please reach out to a member of our Investigations & White Collar Crime team.
The content of this article is provided for information purposes only and does not constitute legal or other advice.
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